Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Book Review: Faceless Killers

Faceless Killers by Henning MankellMy rating: 5 of 5 starsAn elderly man wakes and feels uneasy. After deciding to look out the window, he notices that the neighbors' windows appear to be open and he thinks he hears cries. His wife takes a look out the window and tells him that the window is broken and that he should go over to find out what's wrong. The man decided to go over their neighbor's house only to find that something terrible has happened. Inspector Kurt Wallander has been called in to check out the scene. He finds the scene rather disturbing. An elderly man has been brutally killed and the man's wife has been tied to a chair with a noose around her neck. The woman is barely alive and while at the hospital, she provides the police with only one clue, the word "foreign." Does she mean the perpetrators were foreigners? Was it another word that sounded like "foreign?" Was it a robbery gone bad or a revenge attack? Somehow the word gets out that the perpetrators are foreigners which spark attacks on asylum seekers. There has been a shooting with one foreigner killed. Kurt Wallander is trying very hard to solve the murders but with so little to go on, things are not at all going well. His wife has left him, his daughter barely sees him, his father is showing signs of senility, and the murder of the elderly couple drives Wallander into deep despair. Faceless Killers is a crime novel from Henning Mankell. It is one of many Kurt Wallander stories that Mankell has written. The book was originally written in Scandinavian. Although there may be a lot of readers who will consider the story to be slow to develop, I find the book refreshing. It is very different from other crime novels that tend to proceed so fast that things get lost in the numerous twists and turns of the story. Kurt Wallander is a very realistic character. A policeman whose family is falling apart and is having a tough time doing his job. I am drawn to his character. There are times I feel sorry for him, times when I want to wallop him on the head, times when I am rooting for him, and times when I am unable to contain myself from finding out what he does next.